Living on Koh Rong Samlem

Finally a message from us. The internet connection is not good enough to post blogs.  Last weekend we were on neighbouring island Koh Rong,  but the internet connection of the whole island was off.
We have had a good time up to now.  Dolf is in training to become a dive master and Annelies has joined the survey team to investigate seahorses and their habitat. The first week the weather was sometimes too bad for diving, with high waves, wind and choppy water but it has definitely improved by now. The climate change is noticed here as well, because from November onwards the sea is supposed to be flat.
We live in very basic conditions. We share a small two room bungalow with four people in bunk beds. The second room is our shower which consists of a big ton of cold water. The living room is under a big roof with big tarps as walls.  They are usually open to let the breeze in.We will add some pictures in our next blog to give you a better idea.
We live together with a group of volunteers that varies in size. We started with 30 and are now down to 20.
Some volunteers stay two weeks, while others stay for several months. Most are European but there are also people from the states, Canada and Australia. The food is actually pretty good, but is of course always accompanied with rice. On the mainland you can buy lots of different fruits and there are many western restaurants. In sihanoukville you can find food from every European country because a lot of Western people started their own restaurant. We just bought a kilo of rambutans, comparable with lychee. Dragonflies are also really good. Search for a picture on the internet, both inside and outside, because they look pretty weird.

We live next to a small village of fisherman. Unfortunately, bigger trawlers from Thailand and Vietnam have largely depleted the local fish population, which means we are mainly measuring the recovery of the reef. The local kids catch squid using lines from their small foam boats and the village fishermen have only long boats. There is a 300m sustainable fishing zone around the island but unfortunately the patrol team is undermanned and paid extra by the big companies to close their eyes when a trawler comes along. However, the marine life is still abundant and interesting to discover. Tomorrow we will post a blog which describes our work more in detail.